As part of our series of essays for VFXRio on synthetic art – metaverses, generative art, and AI – this essay presents a more creative approach. Using Midjourney and ChatGPT, we created a series of imaginary letters sent by artists to the Belgian surrealist painter René Magritte, as a starting point to consider questions about AI, creativity, and how we, as humans, interact with machines.

— PART I: DEAR MAGRITTE —

— PART II: SYMBOLS —

— PART III: TEXT AND IMAGE —